Doug Wheeler

This monograph, the first book dedicated to Wheeler, includes extensive archival imagery from early on in the artist’s career, along with rich and immersive plates from his 2012, 2014, and 2016 shows at David Zwirner, along with his numerous projects both in the United States and Europe.

Known for his immersive environments, American artist Doug Wheeler’s pioneering use of light as a medium to articulate space helped define what is often referred to as the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. The most comprehensive overview of the artist’s career to date, this publication features extensive illustrations of his most important works, as well as never-before-published images, drawings, and other archival material.

Through his careful manipulation of space, light, and sound, Wheeler invites his audience to participate in a range of sensate experiences. His innovative installations “invoke an experience of light itself as an almost tactile presence,” as noted by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times.

This monograph is structured around the most significant and substantial essay on the artist to date by the distinguished Italian art historian Germano Celant, who has been acquainted with Wheeler since the early 1970s. Writing about the “intense and direct dialogue about the possible absoluteness of the pictorial invisible,” Celant offers a detailed account of and context for Wheeler’s development as one of the most original and influential artists of his generation.

Based upon extensive primary research, this publication fills a wide gap in the history of the Light and Space movement and makes a major contribution to the historical record of phenomenal art more generally. With its vibrant imagery and ambitious critical approach, Doug Wheeler is a definitive exploration of the body of work by an artist whose significance only increases with time.

About the Author

Germano Celant, renowned art historian and theoretician, is internationally acknowledged for his theories on Arte Povera. Additionally, he is the author of more than one hundred publications and has curated numerous exhibitions for prominent museums and institutions worldwide. Currently, he is the artistic and scientific superintendent of Fondazione Prada, Milan and Venice, and the curator of both Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Milan, and Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova, Venice. Recently, he was the curator of Arts & Foods: Rituals since 1851 at the Triennale di Milano during Expo 2015 in Milan; the project director of The Floating Piers, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work at Lake Iseo, Italy, in 2016; and the curator of Post Zang Tumb Tuuum. Art Life Politics: Italia 1918–1943 at Fondazione Prada, Milan, in 2018.